When Xhai opened his eyes, a red scarab beetle the size of his palm was sitting on the ground three inches from his nose. It twitched its pincers at him.
Sounds filled his ears. Distant screaming, the roar of fire. Xhai frowned. The expression applied itself more with his heavy brow than with his mouth, but even that small wrinkle of his forehead made his skull throb. A hot gust of wind kicked up and blew gritty dust from the ground into his eyes. He squeezed them shut while grains of dirt and rocky sand stung his face. He kept his eyes shut for a long moment, waiting for the sting to subside. Eventually the wind died down, but the general discomfort didn't go away. It spread and turned into a dull ache throughout his whole body.
He slowly became conscious of the fact that he was lying face down on hard earth. His right arm was stretched out over his head, the other was folded awkwardly under him. That arm was starting to go numb and he wondered how long he had been lying on it. He started to shift to one side, but he stopped when a lance of pain forked through his left arm like lightning. His first concern was that it was broken. Could he move his fingers? He would have to roll off his arm to find out. He took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. Then he took another breath, held it, clenched his teeth, and rolled over onto his back with a loud groan. The red beetle skittered away.
Once on his back, Xhai lay there for a long moment, panting softly from even that small effort. The air he breathed was hot and it smelled like smoke and sulfur. He opened his eyes and the sky he stared at was a hazy red and streaked with great black, billowing clouds. Ash fluttered down from the sky like ebony snowflakes. It landed on Xhai's face, velvety soft and weightless.
He could still hear the sound of people screaming far away, though it was less now. He ignored the sounds for now and turned his focus inward. He tried to wiggle his fingers. His hand was numb, so he could not tell if he was succeeding. He rolled his head to the side to look at his arm. He found he could wiggle his fingers, but only a little. He could not make a fist. Nothing that was supposed to be inside was outside, no bones sticking out or blood, but there was swelling in his hand and forearm, and there was already bruising. A small fracture, he guessed.
Movement drew his eyes upward. About a hundred feet away, the wooden husk of the zeppelin lay in splintered ruins at the end of the deep scar it had gouged into the earth when it had made its unexpected descent from the air. Its balloon was flat and draped over part of the wooden frame of the flying ship, and both the balloon and the ship were on fire. People scurried around the zeppelin, mostly goblins, but some orcs and some trolls. They appeared to be trying to save cargo from the ship more than they were trying to save lives. Even more bodies were strewn over the ground, some writhing and crying out in pain from injuries sustained in the crash, others not moving at all.
Xhai watched, dazed and hypnotized by the chaos until a huge, deafening sound like an iron warship running aground drowned out everything else. A cold shock flushed through Xhai's blood in the split second it took his shaken mind to place the noise. He turned his eyes back to the sky as an enormous black shape glided overhead. The beat of its wings against the air was like a gale rushing past Xhai's ears, and not five heartbeats after the first roar ended, it sounded again.
He lay there, frozen. His eyes widened as he stared up at the monstrous beast that circled overhead. In the aftermath of its roar, the sound of the fire blazing that had seemed so loud before was like a quiet whisper now. He suddenly remembered why the zeppelin had crashed.
He needed to find cover. The black dragon soared high over the wreckage, but Xhai was willing to bet it was not content with just having driven the zeppelin from its skies, or else it would have left by now. Xhai was probably safer lying still like the bodies that littered the ground than if he were up and running around. The closest survivor to him was an orc lying on the ground. The orc was writhing and moaning, and even from several dozen feet away, Xhai could see the bones of his broken leg punching out through the skin. He reminded Xhai of a jackrabbit with two broken back legs. As a young hunter, he had used such tactics to bait his pit traps. Even if the predator that came to get the jackrabbit fell into the pit, things did not end well for the rabbit. Xhai could not see things ending well for the orc, either.
Something rustled above his head on the ground. It hurt to crane his neck to look, but he did it slowly. This time it was no fist-sized beetle that twitched its pincers at him, but an enormous scorpid. It was as bigger than a boar, twice the size of any scorpid he had ever seen in Durotar, and the scorpids in Durotar did not have venom dripping from their stingers. Xhai tensed and swallowed a curse. Of all the shitty luck. Had he survived a zeppelin crash just to be stung by a scorpid? Had he escaped the attention of a dragon just to be dragged under a rock and eaten by an oversized insect?
Xhai gritted his teeth and rolled over onto his stomach. He moved slowly so he would not startle the scorpid. Any sudden movement was more likely to make it attack than frighten it away. Xhai's throat felt like he had swallowed a handful of dusty earth as he stared up at the insect. It pinched its claws a couple times and hissed, clearly agitated by the commotion around it. It bent its jointed legs and lowered its head, raising its hind end and its tail, but it made no further aggressive moves.
Keeping low on his stomach, Xhai reached down to his hip for the handle of his hook knife He was relieved to find it still it its sheath. He had no idea where his short bow was, or his quiver for that matter. He would have to work with what he had on him. Fortunately, he was fanatical about keeping his knives oiled and sharpened. It was not a regular occurrence that his prey got past Tokka or got too close for him to shoot it with his bow, but once was more than often enough that it paid to keep his hunting knives in good shape.
He had the fleeting thought that he did not know Tokka's whereabouts, or if the raptor was even still alive. The reptile had been below decks in the stable of the zeppelin with the other mounts and pets. Xhai spared a glance to the wreckage. The hull of the ship had hit the ground first and it was in splintered ruins. Xhai's gut twisted as he briefly considered the fate of his pet. He allowed himself only a few moments to think on it, though. He had more-pressing worries.
The scorpid twitched its tail at him and goblets of venom flung from the tip. One landed inches from Xhai's face and sizzled into the ground, corroding through the hard-packed earth. He stared in disbelief at the hole it had made until the scorpid screeched and struck at him with its stinger. Xhai rolled to the side and the stinger missed him by about a foot, but the scorpid snapped its tail back and struck again. He jerked out of the way and lashed out with his knife. The scorpid danced back on its jointed legs and screeched again.
Xhai knew if he could get on his feet the odds would be, if not in his favor, at least a little more even. When the scorpid backed up, Xhai pushed to his knees and got one foot under him, but that was all he had time for before the insect lunged forward again and lashed its tail. He barely had time to get his arm up to protect his face and block the stinger with his knife. Several small drops of venom splattered against the leather vest he was wearing and started immediately eating through it. Searing, burning pain flared up where one drop hit his cheek. It felt as if someone were holding a red-hot poker to his skin, and he realized if he didn't get his vest off he would have an even bigger problem when the venom finished burning through the leather.
But there was no time to worry about it. The scorpid drew back its tail for a forth strike. Xhai prepared to lash out again with his knife. If he was lucky, he might be able to lop off the stinger. He didn't want to think about what the venom would do to his insides if the stinger caught him.
The scorpid struck and Xhai swiped with his knife, but before predator and prey even clashed, something dove between them. Xhai flung himself backward and he watched as an enormous black worg closed its teeth around the scorpid's tail just behind the stinger. The canine vigorously shook its head from side to hide and Xhai could hear its its powerful jaws cracking the exoskeleton of the insect as it proceeded to tear the stinger from the end of the scorpid's tail.
There was shouting all around him then. Xhai looked up and watched as orcs and trolls in plate armor with steel weapons ran in from all directions. No... a second look proved that only the orcs wore armor. The trolls wore leather armor, if any at all.
Two orcs ran in and attacked the scorpid in front of Xhai, striking at it with edged maces. With its stinger rendered useless by the worg, it had only its pincers to defend itself, and those were not enough. The orcs crushed its head and broke its spine, and the giant insect crumpled to the ground, a lifeless pile of spiny legs and splintered exoskeleton.
Then the orcs turned and looked at him. One of them had a crude, red Horde symbol painted on the front of his breastplate, and in the center of it was a black, five-fingered hand print. That orc looked at Xhai with hard, black eyes, then glanced at the other and spoke to him in orcish.
Xhai's orcish was not what it should have been for growing up in Revantusk. He could understand it better than he could speak it. The Revantusk tribe was not actually a part of the Horde, but the tribal leader, Primal Torntusk, had agreed to a pact of friendship and of mutual assistance with the orc warchief Thrall and his new Horde. Xhai had personally had little dealings with the orcs or the other races that often traveled through his village, and orcish was the Horde's language of business, trade, and everything else. All the races within the faction spoke it. The tauren, the Darkspear trolls, the blood elves, and the Forsaken all spoke it, and these days, if you wanted anything to do with any of them, you had to speak it, too. Even the goblins in Booty Bay, from whom he'd bought passage on their zeppelin, and who were strictly neutral when it came to Horde-Alliance faction dealings, had been speaking a smattering of the common trading pidgin and orcish.
Two two orcs looming over him now spoke the gruff, brusque tongue between themselves, and Xhai had to quickly rewire his brain to think in their language.
"He's one of ours," the second orc said to the one in the breastplate. "He looks like one of ours. The moss on the skin, it means he's a forest troll."
"Fine, so he is. Leave him. We have enough to be doing without dragging a broken troll back into the mountain to find him a healer."
"Are you stupid or hadn't you noticed we don't exactly have that many left. They're not expendable. Can you walk?" The second one was addressing Xhai now. Xhai did a quick check of himself. He could move his legs and back just fine, so he didn't think walking would be a problem. He wet his dry lips with his equally dry tongue and opened is mouth to reply, but apparently it was not fast enough. The orc in the breastplate kicked him in the kidney with his hard boot, and Xhai gasped as pain exploded in his lower back.
"Answer the question, two-toes!"
Xhai's anger flared up and helped squelch the pain. He snarled and lashed out with his knife, but he was weak, in pain, and exhausted, and the next thing he saw was that same hard leather boot coming straight at his face.
Then there was nothing.